


Tether

by Aud_McCartney



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, I've played through 5-6 times as Female Revan and have given her many names, KotOR, Post-Game, and yet somehow I was Today Years Old when I learned I'm not the only hypernerd doing this, but the most recent was Talya Dorne so it's canon now; welcome, holy shit what am I doing posting romance, if this becomes a series you have no one to blame but myself, so I've been playing this game and shipping these idiots for like 15 years, so now that I've found my people (you) it's time to bash them (you) over the head with my feelings, takes place on the Ebon Hawk like a day after the medal ceremony, written three years ago and edited/expanded this week for optimum emotion-wringing, wrote my first fic about them (no not this one) in like 8th grade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aud_McCartney/pseuds/Aud_McCartney
Summary: The mind wanders in transit. Sometimes it needs guiding home.
Relationships: Carth Onasi/Female Revan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 41





	Tether

“Carth.”

It’s the third time she’s tried to get his attention. The first involved a throwaway line of banter she’s already forgotten. The second, a question as to what’s on his mind. Now, she gracelessly drops a parcel wrapped in clingfilm onto the console in front of him. Combined with his name, that finally snaps his reverie, and he turns away from quite literally staring into space.

“Sorry,” he mutters. A few sheepish lines etch themselves around his eyes. There’s a half-smile to match.

Her own features soften in response; she barely notices. He always spends his gentlest looks on her. How many others would still spare her even one? It’s enough to forgive him his lapse. Or a few thousand of them.

“It’s all right.” There’s a matching parcel in her hand, and she steps into the copilot seat, holding it up to show him. “I brought us some food.”

“Oh. Great.” He picks up the one on the controls, unwrapping it quickly. The color of the meat on the sandwich slows him somewhat. He turns it over, inspecting. “What, ah…?”

“Salt-dried firaxa.”

Carth blinks. “As in the sharks. This is firaxan shark.”

“That’s what the label in the cargo hold said.”

“I guess, ah… I guess that explains why it’s black. And…translucent.” Neither observation makes him sound all that thrilled about eating it.

Talya offers him a smile, pulling back the wrapping on her own. “Davik had a rancor’s head mounted on his wall. You can’t be surprised he was into exotics.”

“I guess not,” Carth grins. “Tell you what, next time we steal a ship from someone, let’s pick somebody with a little more modest taste.”

“What, you were craving blue milk and bantha stew?” Talya teases, almost like a normal person, and Carth laughs, almost like a normal person.

“Blue milk, no. Bantha, maybe. There’s not a lot you can do wrong with bantha.”

It’s easy when it’s like this. She can be funny, and he can be the kind of guy who laughs with funny women. He’s any other weary pilot, and she’s no one’s last great hope. Or worst nightmare, either. 

It’s quiet in the cockpit. The autopilot hums. Scanners blip in soothing rhythm. Hundreds of millions of specks of white starlight crawl past the viewport in magnificent sheets, and before its vastness, they’re just a couple of humans, bone-tired travelers, who don’t mean much of anything in the face of it.

It’s nice not to mean much once in a while.

They eat their firaxa sandwiches. Or, rather, Talya eats. She takes one unflinching bite—she never seemed to care much what she ate, or at least, can’t remember if she did—and lets it last awhile, watching the drift of thousands of specks around their little hull. Drawing out the moment.

She doesn’t see that Carth’s sandwich is resting on the console again, untouched. Or that he’s mulling something. Pursing his mouth to speak, then changing his mind. Rolling words over his tongue until they feel right enough to let out.

She doesn’t see it, but she senses it.

Whatever was distracting him is back. More likely, it never left. But she won’t ‘Jedi’ him. Won’t search his feelings, even though they’re plain, or pull thoughts from his mind like he’s little more than a glitching datapad. There’s no need for that, and no warrant.

 _Patience_ , she thinks. Patience is what Carth responds to. What he rewards. And what he deserves. Reading his feelings feels like betrayal, and even _she_ can’t quite place why, given her utterly benign intent. Maybe it’s just one more part of him she’s deathly afraid of taking away.

“You don’t have to worry about ‘Jedi-ing’ me.” He’s looking at her, wearing a knowing half-grin now, a little more somber than what it was before. Must have been for the past few seconds. _Damn_. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it. But I know I’m being obvious. I know you know something’s on my mind.”

“Yeah, well. It’s the ‘what’ that I was trying not to pry about.”

“Well, it’s just that…”

Carth trails off, and stays off-trail for the longest few moments in many, many worlds. Longer than usual. Then he sighs to himself, and with some effort, raises his eyes to lock with hers. Bracing. From that alone, she knows he’s going to ask her for an answer he dreads.

“You were tempted,” he finally says, as if it’s a statement. “Weren’t you.”

Now is Talya’s turn to blink slowly. Yet without confusion. Confusion is the furthest from the thousands of things she knows she feels, both in her mind and in the air around her. She places her unfinished ration on the console.

“At the temple summit. You were tempted to the dark side when Bastila tried to turn you back,” Carth clarifies, unnecessarily, before she can answer. His words are deliberate; he’s clearly rehearsed what follows. “It’s all right if you were. You’re here now. You killed Malak. I trust that you did everything for the right reasons. I’m not asking this because I _doubt_ you, Talya. I just… I just have to know. I have to know what happened up there.”

 _He fears for you_.

She isn’t trying to read his feelings. It just happens. They’re too loud. Too strong to be denied by such a heavy power in such a confined space.

“I worry about you.”

And then sometimes, he just says them out loud.

“I wonder how many times a person can reject a pull like that. How much of that they can take before it works…or before it hurts them. Even a person as strong as you.”

She ‘Jedis’ him now because that’s what she is, and at this point, she doesn’t have a choice. When she translates his fear back to him, she’s at least got the compassion to do it gently.

“You aren’t going to lose me, Carth.”

He looks down. Caught. It makes her remember that he bleeds.

“Aren’t I?”

“No,” she insists. “Not by choice, anyway.”

“‘Not by choice.’ Yeah. Well.” The weight on him is palpable as he puts her back in his sights. “Morgana didn’t die by choice either. That didn’t make it any easier.”

Of all the reasons to wince internally at the mention of your lover’s dead wife, Talya’s distantly aware that hers is regretfully unique. She hates that.

“Carth, come on–”

“I know you could die,” he jumps in, at the same time dismissing the idea altogether. “ _Any_ of us could. But you’re stronger than almost everyone you could possibly come up against. You can defend yourself. Anybody who wants you dead is gonna have to go through you first, _and_ me, and they’re not gonna survive that.”

 _‘And me,’_ she thinks. That’s what sticks most, for good and bad reasons alike.

“That’s not what I’m worried about. What I’m worried about is the dark side becoming more than you can handle again. I’m worried about what it’ll do to you. Considering the past, I don’t think that’s out of line. I just wanna know.”

He’s right. It isn’t out of line. He spends every day adrift on a freighter with the former Dark Lord of the Sith. Just because she doesn’t retain the waking memories doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Even if it all still feels like the doings of someone else. And may as well have been.

Talya contemplates. She wants to be as deliberate with her choice of words as Carth has been. To take the same degree of care. Moments pass, and she decides.

“Revan died, Carth.”

“I _know_ that, I trust you, but if you–”

“No. You don’t understand.” He needs to. “I don’t mean it as some spiritual metaphor. Darth Revan was killed by the Jedi strike team. Successfully. You heard Bastila.”

“Yeah, I did, but–”

“No, let me finish, okay?”

She recognizes his concession before he says it, in the way he presses his spine to the back support, forcing his soldier’s posture. She also knows she’s only getting it because he loves her, and that’s not the kind of thing you take advantage of, or waste. Not with her track record.

“All right. Fair. Go ahead.”

Talya inhales deeply, beginning again. “Revan… _I_ needed a complete mind-reprogramming because I had no active mind _left_. I was as good as braindead. Bastila just…used that spark of the Force to foster new life in an old vessel… That’s what I’m saying. I’m like a new person in the same body. Whatever part of me was Revan died in that attack, and I’m what was born that day in its place. The only me you’ve ever known is the only me that exists anymore.”

“Except that whatever was left of your subconscious was enough to give you those visions. There was enough of Revan left to get us all the way to the Star Forge.”

“Just foggy bits and pieces. You know that.”

“But you get stronger in the Force every day. Who’s to say you won’t remember more tomorrow? Or a year from now?”

“Carth, I don’t–”

“Dammit, can’t you just…” He’s exasperated now, and she has to let him be exasperated. It’s the only recourse she has. He sighs heavily, and his tone loses an edge. It gains something pleading. “Can’t you just _let_ me be worried? There’s not much getting around it, anyway. Can’t you just let me get it out? That’s all I can do here, okay? All I can do is worry.”

It’s a simple request. One of the few he’s ever made. She knows she should honor it.

But she isn’t going to, because she knows just how true it is. How late he stays awake at night. How clouded his mind is, even with Malak defeated and Bastila redeemed and everything dark behind them. After everything.

The war isn’t over yet. Especially not to him. She won’t have won anything until that changes.

She lets him have the silence, until she doesn’t. “My turn to talk?” she asks.

He pulls a hand down his face. “Sure,” he says. Not insincere. Just tired. If she can’t give him rest, she’ll have to settle for giving him her secrets. She hopes they’re enough.

“Do you remember what you told me on Manaan? Before we left for the Star Forge?”

“Of course I do,” he says, quiet and earnest. “I told you I wanted to be a reason for you to survive it.”

“Right. You did.” Talya leans against the copilot’s armrest, weaving her fingers. “Now can I say something in confidence?”

Carth hesitates. On the last part; not the first. “Yes, but why in confidence?”

“Because I’m sure I still have enough enemies to populate half the galaxy.” That’s putting it lightly. “And if the wrong people ever got wind of this, I have a bad feeling you’d be in more danger than even _you_ could possibly imagine.” That’s putting it lightly, too, and it’s necessary.

“Well I’m not worried. But all right. I promise.”

“Good.” She exhales, hard. Her perseverance to get the words out steamrolls his stubbornness, and then she’s admitting it. “Because it worked.”

His brow furrows. Her unusual candidness has him a half-step behind. “What worked?”

“At the temple summit, when Bastila tried to tempt me to the dark side, I didn’t _feel_ tempted. I couldn’t even picture what she was saying, although I remember… I remember her passion…”

Blips of it come back to her, all red pangs and static whirls, and then she moves on, for the same reason as that day. The one in front of her.

“My thoughts were on you. If I feared anything, it wasn’t anything to do with power or weakness. It was failing you. All I wanted was to get back to the ship and make sure you were all right. You wanted to be a reason for me to survive…to have a life after everything we went through… Well, it worked. You were. You are.” Something dense dissolves away from her chest. “I could never fall to the dark side again as long as I knew you were alive.”

An expression draws across Carth’s face. Slowly, bit by bit as her words sink into his brain. She can’t name it, exactly, because she’s never seen one aimed at her before. So she touches its driving emotion through the Force; the most tentative peek, only to assess.

The light _burns_.

If only she’d waited a second. It’s clear now that he wants to smile, but he’s holding back, still cautious. Crossing his Ts. Words queue themselves behind his mouth again, and he waits until they’re in line. “And…if you didn’t know I was alive?”

 _What a question_. “I’ll always know if you’re alive.”

“Ah…because you love me?”

“Because of the Force, as nice as the soppy answer is.”

“All right.” Carth leans forward in his seat, rubbing his hands together. He seems to want to flight-test his relief before he allows himself to feel it. As if, if it’s going to combust, he’d rather it happened on the ground than in midair. “Then what happens if I die? It’s plausible. I’m a Republic admiral. And we did steal our ship from the Exchange, they’re pretty ruthless. Say something happens that I can’t handle, and you’re not there to save me. Would you fall to the dark side then?”

Talya’s brow gathers warningly at the thought. He’s working grim today. “Tone down your hypotheticals or I’m pushing you through the airlock at lightspeed,” she deadpans without a trace of humor. Then she eases. “But no. Even then I wouldn’t.”

His focus is pressing. “How can you be sure?”

It feels like it should be so obvious.

Because he’s the kind of noble she hadn’t been sure existed anymore, that’s how. Because the thought of betraying him, even dead—or worse, alive: her sins weighing in his eyes, shadowing the last flare of his hope once and for all—burns like sizzling plasma carving Revan’s name in painstaking script between her ribs. Because she’s so in love with him that it should frighten her, but so sure of him that, somehow, it doesn’t. Because he’s the only home she has any memory of really wanting. Because the prospect of losing him is the only thing that scares her more than the locked-away horrors in the furthest recesses of her brain.

All of that is absolutely too intense to say right now. It’ll come up, later, when it’s more relevant, or at least easier to say. When she’s not trying to clear his mind for him.

“Because your dumb face shows up in my head anyway, you big ewok, all right? Are you satisfied?” _There_. That’s a much lower-stakes way to put it. He laughs, and she feels gratitude for causing it, releasing another tense knot she hadn’t felt until now. “The last thing I could possibly ever do in your memory is the one thing you’d spend your dying breath to stop me from doing at all.”

“That…almost made sense.”

“You’re exhausting, you know that?”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“The _point_ is that… I could never do that to you. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

Carth’s temperance ebbs by degrees. He confirms, “Never. Not even to save my life?”

It’s time to go where she’s about to go. Where maybe this was always going. Talya leans forward, elbows on her knees, leveling with him entirely.

“I heard what you said on the Leviathan. You were tortured every time I refused to give up the Republic, and I still didn’t. I loved you then too, you know.”

Bringing that up was a risk. Briefly, she’s there again, through the window of the Force, rent apart by even the faint echoes of his agony. Sick with it. Remembering the way her imprisoned self’s vision hazed dark at the edges as the bolts tore through his body. Her cold sweat as she realized too late what it would mean for everyone in the room if he dropped dead.

She returns quickly. Bringing that up was a risk.

He’s worth that.

From the look on his face now, her admission is news to him. Personally, she’d thought she’d been a lot more obvious. “Wait. You did?”

Her hands open and close. “I’m not in the habit of telling _acquaintances_ their screams tore me apart. I thought about talking, more than once. Just to make it stop. How could I _not_ … But I still never felt any real temptation to go through with it. I knew I’d have been saving you in the short term just to decimate you all over again.” She pauses. Then she’s just a bit more honest with him, inching that boundary forward yet again. He makes that okay to do. “I couldn’t make you hate me.”

“No, no, I…” Always so quick to save her. “It’s not that I’d _hate_ you if you ever gave in, I know what the dark side does to people, I just…” Carth exhales. “I had to know it wouldn’t happen because of me. That I wouldn’t be a liability for you. I don’t ever want to be a reason for you to go back there. No matter what happens.”

“You won’t be.”

“I mean, I know that’s why the Jedi don’t exactly support having attachments.”

Carth versus the Council. There’s a concept. She almost laughs.

 _No contest. I’ve gone rogue before_.

“Well, I did just defeat Malak. And with your help. I doubt anyone’s going to take exception to my having you around.”

Talya knows exactly how long he’s been fighting that smile when it finally comes out, spreading slowly up to full power. Seeing it is worth every moment of the wait, and every intrusion that soured her thoughts in the meantime.

“So… You’re saying there’s really no possible way–”

“That I’ll ever fall to the dark side,” she finishes for him.

“Right. And that’s because of–”

“You.” She feels herself beaming back.

Carth is staring plain at her now. And she doesn’t have to reach out to guess his emotions. They’re dancing around his eyes and floating between them in the weightless sigh of his relief. He nods once, accepting, and it feels like shaking hands on something binding.

“Okay. Good. And thank you. I didn’t mean to make you walk me through all this, it’s just that… This is a good thing, and I wanna believe in it. You and I, this is… This is different from everything else that’s happened in our lives, I can _feel_ it… I know what you’re not. I know you’re not Revan anymore. And I know you’re not my wife…” Curiously, she watches him swallow down nerves, taking on a new demeanor. “I’d… I’d like to…well, at least I’d _hope_ to be able to consider…falsifying one of those two statements, eventually. I just wanted to make sure, before anything else happened, that I could rule out the wrong one first.”

The comm on the controls starts to chirp, followed by crackling rips of static. “ _Admiral Onasi, Master Dorne, come in… Admiral Onasi, Master Dorne, this is Admiral Dodonna…_ ” Talya doesn’t hear it because she’s still staring at him, unblinking. Jaw slightly agape. Incredulous eyes in danger of pooling out of her skull and straight onto the floor, though she hopes he doesn’t notice that part. He’ll never let her forget it.

That damn gaze rats him out. He definitely notices.

“ _Someone’s_ hyperdrive is working just fine,” she manages, when she remembers that words can be used to express thoughts, or divert from them. An awed baby smirk betrays her, but there’s no immediate desire to strike it down.

Carth’s smirk is out in full, on the other hand, slightly bashful, unapologetic and openly adoring, because he’s a kriffing bastard, and it’s about time. “Sorry. Too fast?”

It really isn’t.

She dodges the question, studying him tentatively again, trying her damnedest not to spend her joy too quickly. It may or may not be doing any good.

“So, have you? Ruled the wrong one out?”

“I think so. Yeah.”

“Okay… Okay, so, then–”

“One second. Hold that thought.” He’s still wearing that damnable smug face of his when he swivels toward the controls and reaches for the comm switch. “Admiral Dodonna, this is Admiral Onasi.”

“ _Is Master Dorne with you?_ ”

“She’s meditating on something.” He barely disguises his laugh when her projectile ball of clingfilm bounces off his cheek. “I hope this is worth interrupting our lunch break, Admiral.”

“ _Just wanted to relay that your travel companions have settled in at base, and the fleet is reporting strong. All here wish you both a pleasant stay on Telos._ ”

“You have our thanks, Admiral. Tell our crew we’ll see them in a standard month.”

“ _Of course. May the Force be with you._ ”

Carth terminates the transmission. It’s his last voluntary action before his chair swivels around on its own, with him in it, on a turntable her mind made from thin air.

“‘Meditating on something.’ Ass.” Talya’s standing now, and she leans down to him, gaze lowering. Either her nose is cold, or his cheek is exceptionally warm. Either way, she wants to stay this close, never further than a breath from where he is. “Meditate on this.”

Softly, her lips capture his mouth, not unpleasantly grazing over infinitesimal burrs of stubble. He presses back, at once possessive and relaxed, welcoming her home to him—and when he does, the white warmth she feels surging softly in her abdomen, showering benign sparks like snowflakes, has nothing to do with the Force. Life and death, light and dark have no presence, no say. The air in the cabin feels closer and safer for reasons independent of any of them.

Carth is good. And loyal. And the way he kisses is reverent, full of wanting, with all his heart. As if she deserves it. As if, madly enough, maybe _he_ was the one who might not. Still a little new, a little careful. Still finding its place among the stars, a little like everything else.

It gets better every passing day. They all are.

Then she straightens, before she loses the ability. The last time she gave in to her feelings in here, her foot accidentally set a course for Nar Shaddaa.

“I’m going to check the stabilizers Teethree added to the starboard engine.” She bobs her head toward his untouched ration. “You’d better have eaten that by the time I get back.”

Carth’s still smirking like a nerf-herder. Probably something to do with the fact that, if she looks for it, she can still faintly see her own Force signature humming around his mouth. “I thought I was supposed to be meditating,” he calls after her as she turns and crosses the threshold. “You’re gonna have to make up my mind!”

She makes up her own instead, which, for once, is blessedly easy. She’s going to like this life.


End file.
